"The Great Intelligence will focus upon this planet. Soon it will begin to grow and at last take on physical form. At last its wanderings in space will be at an end!"

The Doctor works out that the Yeti's control unit was dislodged in the fight but Khrisong won't let him go outside to find it, nor will he let Travers leave to search for the Yeti. Victoria, seeing the shape of the chest cavity, wonders if the sphere they found in the caves was a control sphere too, sparking a search for the missing sphere. Ralpachan hasn't seen it but he did let Travers out of the Monastery after he said Khrisong had given him permission. Sapan has constructed a "spirit trap" round the immobilised Yeti, which Abbot Songsten congratulates him on while Khrisong and Rinchen argue as to whether the Yeti should have been brought inside. Khrisong is furious when the Doctor arrives and tells him Travers has left. The Abbot falls into a trance and is summoned by Padmasambhava, and this sparks Victoria's curiosity when she finds out that none of the monks have ever seen the elderly master who dwells in the monastery. In the sanctum Padmasambhava moves a Yeti model on a map to join two more. Outside Travers sees two Yeti joined by a third. Padmasambhava believes the Doctor may endanger their plan: he moves two Yeti models to the Monastery, mirrored by two Yeti who come down off the mountain. Khrisong is searching for the Control Sphere outside the gates and find it buried in the mud but the two Yeti arrive, attacking him and retrieving the sphere. The Doctor humorously comments

They came to get their ball back!

while in his sanctum Padmasambhava observes that

It would seem that the Yeti have caused some little upset at the gate

before dispatching the Abbot to go to meet the Yeti. He gives him a glass pyramid

Take it to the caves. Then the Great Intelligence will focus upon this planet. Soon it will begin to grow and at last take on physical form. At last its wanderings in space will be at an end. My work will then be done

Khrisong says the sphere emitted a sound and the Doctor realises they can track the signal.
Khrisong gives the Doctor & Jamie leave to fetch the equipment from the Tardis. They leave without telling Victoria who searches for them. She makes her way to the inner sanctum as the missing sphere edges towards the captured Yeti. Songsten hypnotising Ralpachan and so passes through the gate unobserved. Padmasambhava sends uses his hypnotic tone to send Victoria away. She returns to the room with the Yeti in just as the sphere reaches it activates the robotic beast.

Episode 2 looked good, but 3 sounds even better. I'd love to see this one!

The Doctor is making slow progress: he knows that the Yeti are robots and the sphere is controlling it:

RINCHEN: These creatures are indeed fearsome.
JAMIE: Aye, you were lucky you weren't killed.
KHRISONG: But why did they just turn and leave? They had us at their mercy. Why?
DOCTOR: They didn't come to fight. They came for the sphere.
JAMIE: Are you sure?
DOCTOR: Pretty sure. They didn't want me to examine it.
KHRISONG: You talk of these creatures as if they were human, with a human's brain.
DOCTOR: That sphere is like a brain. They had to get it back.
JAMIE: Yes, and that Yeti we caught in the net. Well, that could have been after the sphere we found in the cave.
DOCTOR: I'd still like to know what happened to that one. This sound that you heard?
KHRISONG: It came from the sphere, I swear it.
JAMIE: Some sort of signal, do you think?
DOCTOR: Yes, it could be. Anyway, its a help.
SAPAN: How can this help?
DOCTOR: Well, with the right sort of equipment, these signals can be tracked.
JAMIE: You mean you can find out where the Yeti are getting there instructions from?
DOCTOR: Yes, Jamie.
RINCHEN: Where can we find such equipment?
DOCTOR: We've got to back to the Tardis.
JAMIE: Right.
KHRISONG: This equipment. You have it?
DOCTOR: Yes. But it's outside there on the mountain.
KHRISONG: Then, you must go for it.
JAMIE: You mean you'll let us go?
KHRISONG: I have no choice. I have failed. My warriors are powerless. I must trust you.
DOCTOR: Come on. Let's get me coat.

We however are a few steps ahead of the Doctor and have a much clearer idea what's going on: The Yeti are controlled by the as yet unseen Padmasambhava who is using the Abbot as his main servant. Padmasambhava serves The Great Intelligence which wants to come to Earth and gain corporal form. But the Doctor, Travers and the Monks know none of this and suspicion passes from the Doctor to Travers to elsewhere as the Doctor tries to gain the monk's trust. Sapan's description of the robot Yeti as "a devil with his armour on the inside" is a fantastic one, and the concept of the game board map with miniature figurines controlling the Yeti is a striking image and one that will be recycled later in the show's history.

And right through the episode we have the missing control sphere, carelessly abandoned in episode 2, inching it's way towards the deactivated Yeti carcass which the Monks have surrounded by the Monk's ghost trap.

Superb stuff!

Norman Jones, who plays warrior monk Khrisong, is perhaps the most familiar face to Who fans in the credited cast returning as Major Baker in Doctor Who and the Silurians and Hieronymous in The Masque of Mandragora. Both here and in Masque his eyes are very noticeable: they're wide and staring with him hardly ever blinking. Very unsettling. Prior to Doctor Who he'd appeared in Out of This World, the ITV predecessor to the BBC's Out of the Unknown as Monroe in Botany Bay, an original story by the future Doctor Who writer and Dalek creator Terry Nation. You can also find him on the big screen James Bond film You Only Live Twice as an Astronaut on the 1st American Spacecraft. He played Det. Insp. Perraut in the The Sweeney episode Bad Apple, Andy Drake in The Professionals: Need to Know and has a recurring role in the first two Inspector Morse as Chief Inspector, then Chief Superintendent, Bell, an officer who beats Morse to a promotion appearing in The Dead of Jericho, which also features Patrick Troughton, and Service of All the Dead, which has several Doctor Who guest stars in it!

The Monk Thonmi is played by David Spenser. Spenser had appeared with Doctor who Patrick Troughton before when he played Mark opposite Troughton's Paul in Paul of Tarsus. You can see him in Carry On... Up the Khyber as Bungdit Din's servant. More on Carry Ons next story when Bungdit Din himself shows up! From the 1960s till his death in Sri Lanka in 2013 he was the partner of Doctor Who writer, actor and occasional script editor Victor Pemberton.

Raymond Llewellyn plays the monk Sapan. He has another association with monks and monestarys playing Madog in the Cadfael TV Series episodes One Corpse Too Many, The Sanctuary Sparrow, The Leper of St. Giles & Monk's Hood. He's frequently seen with Rinchen played by David Grey. I'm not 100% sure but I believe Sapan is on the left and Rinchen in the middle of the bellow picture when they're shown talking to Victoria.

Abbot Songsten is played by Charles Morgan who returns as the Gold Usher in director Gerald Blake's
other Doctor Who story The Invasion of Time. He was in the British science fiction disaster movie The Day the Earth Caught Fire, released two years to the day before Doctor who started, where he plays an uncredited Foreign Editor. He too was in Out of This World appearing as the Chief in the first episode Dumb Martian, which launched the series as part of Armchair Theatre.

Amongst the cast we have to deal with a famous name that's *NOT* in the story: moustachioed monk Ralpachan is played by David Baron. "David Baron" was the stage name of playwright Harold Pinter. These are not one and the same: Pinter abandoned the use of the Baron name to perform under in 1959.

Jamie knocks down the prop holding the roof up burying the Yeti. They take a sphere from the pyramid to show the Doctor but as they leave the buried Yeti starts to move. The Doctor is visited by the Monk Thomni who has been sent to take him to Khrisong. The Doctor tells him to look in the straw of the cell as Khrisong arrives to take him away. Thomni finds the Ghanta hidden there. Victoria and Jamie are chased down the mountainside by the Yeti. Khrisong verbally clashes with Rinchen & Saphan about what he plans for the Doctor. The Doctor is tied to the gate as bait for the Yeti. Thomni takes the Ghanta to Abbot Songsten, but hears another voice: Their master Padmasbhava. Padmasbhava now knows the Doctor has returned since the Ghanta has been bought back. Jamie & Victoria meet Travers on the Mountain. They get him to take them to the Monastery in return for showing him where the Yeti's cave is. Padmasbhava questions Thomni and instructs him to have The Doctor released and treated well. The unseen Padmasbhava's hypnotic tone convinces Thomni that his orders come from the Abbot and not Padmasbhava. When Thomni leaves Padmasbhava speaks in a more sinister tone to the Abbot about the Great Plan. Jamie, Victoria and Travers arrive, and Travers tells the monks that he was mistaken. Thomni arrives with the orders from the Abbot and Khrisong frees the Doctor. The sinister Padmasbhava tells the Abbot nothing must stop their preparations as there is little time left. Jamie & Victoria show the silver sphere to the Doctor who asks them about the Yeti. Travers tells them that the Yeti are shy and elusive creatures. Three Yeti are sighted from the monastery. Jamie has a plan to capture it so the Doctor & Victoria retreat into the Monastery. Jamie spreads a net on the floor at the gate: they batter the Yeti and haul the net up, suddenly noticing it has stopped moving. Buried in the mud is a bleeping & wiggling silver sphere which has fallen from the Yeti. A monk finds Jamie's sphere in the monastery and places it by the Buddha statue. The Doctor discovers the Yeti is a robot and there's something missing from inside it's chest. Outside the Monastery the buried sphere admits a bleeping call, returned by Jamie's sphere, left lying by the Buddha's statue, which starts moving....

Episode 2 of The Abominable Snowmen may be my favourite surviving episode of sixties Doctor Who: Great location work, superb dimly lit studio sets (and we'll see much later how important decent lighting is when it all goes wrong in the 80s), good monsters, a sinister presence and even little stuff like the spheres communicating with each other and the moving one at the feet of the Buddha. The plot ticks along nicely in this episode resolving certain aspects of the first episode and introducing new elements, notably the master Padmasbhava. This episode works superbly and makes me wonder how much better episode 1 would be with the pictures.

There appears to be an evolving running joke about Jamie's ability, or lack thereof, to predict things properly!
Recall this exchange from the last episode of the previous story where he had the Cybercontroller tied up in the rejuvenating machine:

DOCTOR: I think not. I think there must be some sort of internal timing mechanism. Jamie, I hope you made those ropes secure.
JAMIE: Oh, the King of the beasties himself couldnae get out of that one.
DOCTOR: Good!

Which is the Cybercontroller's cue to burst through the rope and the machine!

DOCTOR: Jamie, remind me to give you a lesson in tying knots sometime.

So then we have Jamie and Victoria in the cave at the start of the episode:

JAMIE: Are you all right?
VICTORIA: That horrible thing. What was it?
JAMIE: I don't know. Did you see what it did to my sword, though? Broke it like a piece of wood. No human's as strong as that.
VICTORIA: What is this place? And what are those?
JAMIE: Some sort of metal. They're all glowing.
VICTORIA: Oh, let's get away from here, Jamie.
JAMIE: Aye, if we can. I don't think that tunnel's completely blocked. Come on.
JAMIE: Oh, don't worry about that, it's quite dead.

Sure enough just at that point the Yeti trapped under the rubble starts to stir!

JAMIE: What's the matter?
VICTORIA: Look!

Effectively these two scenes are setting up this exchange later in this episode.

JAMIE: Hey, Doctor, if you really want to capture one of these beasties, I think I have an idea which might just work.
DOCTOR: Oh. Victoria?
JAMIE: Eh?
DOCTOR: Victoria, I think this is one of those instances where discretion is the better part of valour. Jamie has an idea. Come along.
JAMIE: No, Doctor
DOCTOR: Come along!

Incredibly Jamie's plan does work, though it's not 100% clear why until the Doctor comes to examine the inert Yeti:

DOCTOR: You were right about one thing, Victoria. This creature certainly doesn't seem to be flesh and blood.
TRAVERS: What?
DOCTOR: It's not your abominable snowman either, Travers. Look. It's metal.
TRAVERS: That's incredible.
THOMNI: What is it?
KHRISONG: A devil's warrior.
DOCTOR: No, I don't think so. It's more like a robot.
TRAVERS: A robot? My dear chap, don't let your imagination run away with you.
DOCTOR: Now, why has it stopped? Wait a minute. Wait a minute.
VICTORIA: Nothing there.
DOCTOR: No, but there has been.

And we've seen what does fit in there: one of the spheres like the one Jamie took from the cave earlier in the episode!

Unfortunately the surviving copy of episode two has a sound fault during this scene, present on all off air recordings of the story. When the Doctor says

"You were right about one thing Victoria — this creature certainly doesn't seem to be flesh and blood".

The audio is missing for the first half of the sentence until the middle of the word Victoria. The fault was disguised for the VHS release but is patched using other surviving Troughton dialogue for the CD and VHS releases.

This scene then leads to the dislodged control sphere, stuck in the mud outside the monastery, communicating with it's abandoned duplicate left lying by the Buddha statue which then starts to move!

Abominable Snowman 2 is the only episode of this story to exist. It was returned to the BBC in 1982 from a collector named Roger Stevens via Ian Levine. Stevens had bought a number of films from a former BBC employee who had "acquired" them. Levine asserted the both Snowman 2 and another episode, Invasion of the Dinosaurs 1 were missing from the archives. Levine returned the copy of Snowmen 2, but held on to Invasion of the Dinosaurs 1 for a little while longer, as a potential bargaining chip is any other sources of missing episodes emerged. That was returned to the BBC in mid 1983. See pages 195-9 of Wiped! Doctor Who's Missing Episodes by Richard Molesworth for more details.

Abominable Snowman 2 was released on video as part of Doctor Who - the Troughton Years in 1991 along with Enemy of the World 3 and Space Pirates 2. It's by some distance the best episode on the tape. A second surviving Yeti episode, The Web Of Fear 1, would have to wait many more years for it's VHS release in 2003 as part of the final Doctor Who VHS release. Both episodes can be found in the Doctor Who - Lost In Time DVD set.

"The Yeti were so rarely seen. Timid. Then, suddenly, they become savage. Did we not wonder why? Did we not wonder what or whom had brought this change? "

High on a Himalayan mountain the explorer Edwards Travers sleeps in his tent. He is awoken by screams, and calls for his fellow explorer John. Emerging from the tent he is confronted by a furry creature that twists his rifle and throws it away as Travers flees. The Tardis has landed in the Himalayas: The Doctor is pleased to be back in Tibet and looks for The Ghanta, a holy bell left with him many years ago. The Doctor steps outside in a huge fir coat. Jamie finds a scimitar in a chest which he's taken with before mistaking the Doctor for a hairy beast when he sees him on the monitor. Victoria finds the Ghanta, but the Doctor is concerned by a huge footprint he finds outside the Tardis. The Doctor leaves Jamie & Victoria in the Tardis as he takes the ghanta to the Det Sen monastery. The Doctor is observed on his journey by a giant hairy beast. Jamie & Victoria get bored and go outside to explore. The Doctor finds the remains of Travers' camp-site and John's body. Jamie & Victoria find the huge footprints and follow them. The Doctor arrives at the Monastery, now carrying Travers rucksack, and finds it seemingly deserted. He enters, standing before a Buddha statue where he's ambushed by a group of warrior Monks. Travers is with them and, seeing his rucksack, is convinced the Doctor murdered his friend causing the Monks to seize him. Their leader Khrisong imprisons him. Victoria & Jamie have followed the tracks to a cave. While inside something rolls a boulder across the exit sealing them in. Travers comes to see the Doctor accusing him of wanting to steal his discovery: He believes he is near to finding the Yeti. The Doctor suggests that Yeti attacked Travers but he says they are shy, timid creatures. The Doctor points out he hasn't the strength to do the damage Travers attacker did. Krisong, Rinchen and Sapan discuss if the Doctor is responsible for the deaths of John and 4 of their brothers when they had previously thought the Yeti responsible. Khrisong decides to put the Doctor to the test. Jamie & Victoria enter a chamber which has a pyramid of silver spheres in it but they are cornered by the creature that has returned: It is a Yeti which snaps Jamie's sword in two.

Every so often Doctor Who wanders off and successfully raids older sources for ideas. Having done "Invasion of the Body Snatchers" and "Curse of the Pharaohs" in recent stories we now get onto The Abominable Snowman. That instantly implies the Himalayas giving us the setting, and when you throw a British explorer in then you've virtually got the first episode written for you. This episode sounds OK without being anything special but better is to come and fortunately we can get a decent idea of what it looks like as there are telesnaps and the next episode, featuring many of the settings in this one, exist and is out on DVD!

There's a marvellous little scene between the Tardis crew to start the episode:

DOCTOR: I don't believe it. Marvellous. After all this time.
JAMIE: Oh, what's so marvellous about that?
DOCTOR: Well, don't you see, Jamie? It's the Himalayas. And I do believe we're in exactly the right. Now, wait a minute.
JAMIE: The Hima - what?
DOCTOR: Shush. Shush.
VICTORIA: The Himalayas, Jamie. They're mountains.
JAMIE: Aye, I can see that. Hey, is it the Earth, Doctor? I don't fancy another tangle down the Cybermen's tomb.
DOCTOR: Shush, Jamie, shush. Yes, of course it's the Earth. Yes, yes, I think I'm right. Yes.
JAMIE: Where are these mountains?
VICTORIA: Don't you know where the Himalayas are? They're in India. Well, at least I think so.
DOCTOR: Yes, that's it! I knew it, I knew it. It's incredible. Right. Oh no. No, not India. This is Tibet. That's where we are, Tibet. Now, there's no time to be lost. Come along, Jamie, we must find the ghanta.
JAMIE: The what?
DOCTOR: The ghanta, the ghanta. I put it here somewhere. Come along, Jamie, help me.
JAMIE: Hey, what am I supposed to be looking for?
DOCTOR: I told you it's. Good Lord, I haven't seen that for years.
JAMIE: Oh, that's the ghanta then?
DOCTOR: No, no, no, no. It's a. Well, whatever it is, it's nice to see it again.
VICTORIA: Oh.

Nope, I've not got a clue what the item he's found is either!

The telesnaps don't preserve the Ghanta in the missing episode one but fortunately we see it clearly in episode two:

As was becoming quite common for Doctor Who a large set was constructed for the story and here it appears to be the main courtyard in the monastery. The telesnaps afford us a clear view right the way across it from the main doors on the left to the statue of Buddha on the right.

This is Doctor Who's first onscreen association with Buddhists and Buddhism, although the story makes it clear that the Doctor has visited Det Sen monastery before. Buddhist themes will become more common in the Third Doctor's era when Barry Letts, a practising Buddhist, produces the program.

Our brief view of the Tardis gives us a look at a couple of the power station panels that seem to have appeared inside it:

The one on the left is completely new, I can't find another picture of that anywhere. There's one in the middle which is impossible to see because it's obscured by the monitor. The one on the right I'm pretty sure is one of the ones which appeared in The Faceless Ones in the Chameleon Tours Hanger.

Cast as the explorer Edward Travers is actor Jack Watling whose daughter Debbie was already working on Doctor Who playing The Doctor's companion Victoria Waterfield. Watling has an an extensive acting CV but Doctor Who is the only thing I can really remember him in. Casting my eye down his list of roles I know I've seen Hancock: The Lift where he plays The Producer, and I will almost certainly have see him in Bergerac, created by Doctor Who author Robert Banks Stewart where he plays Frank in four episodes in the early 1990s. I know I have every episode of Jeeves and Wooster on DVD so I must have his appearance as Lord Wickhammersley in The Purity of the Turf

Extensive location filming is undertaken for this story at Nant Ffrancon Pass in Snowdonia, North Wales.

The area had previously served as the location for Carry on up the Khyber, also fictionally set within the Himalayas.

While on location first time Doctor Who director Gerald Blake took some colour cine film of the location and the cast.

"The energy levels are low. We will survive. You will help us. You will help us!"

Jim Callum throws himself in front of the Doctor taking most of the blast in his shoulder. In the chambers bellow, many of the Cybermen retreat to the tomb they occupied leaving the Controller with a smaller group of Cybermen. Klieg opens the hatch and summons the Controller and the partially cybertised Toberman to the surface. The Controller uses the revitalising machine to repower his weakening form. Attempts by the Doctor and Jamie to trap him in it fail. Controlling Toberman he gets him to strike Klieg down and taking his gun shoots Kaftan dead. Toberman flings the Controller into the console damaging him. The Doctor goes bellow with Toberman to seal the Cybermen in their Tombs but while everyone is tending to the wounded Callum, Klieg sneaks bellow and halts the process. The Doctor engages him about his plans for world domination

The Doctor: Don't you see what this is going to mean to all the people who come to serve Klieg the all powerful? Why, no country, no person would dare to have a single thought that was not your own. Eric Klieg's own conception of the, of the way of life!
Eric Klieg: Brilliant! Yes, yes, you're right. Master of the world.
The Doctor: Well now I know you're mad, I just wanted to make sure.

Klieg is ambushed by one of the remaining Cybermen and killed, while the Cyberman is killed by Toberman. They return to the surface, the Doctor electrifying the doors, hatch and console but as they leave the Controller reactivates and attempts to prevent them closing the doors. Toberman shoves them closed at the cost of his life as he's electrocuted with the doors completing the circuit as they close. Parry, the sole survivor of the expedition proper, leaves with Hopper, Callum & the rest of the rocket ship's crew.

It's quite a bleak ending that with Toberman's body lying lifeless in the dust alongside an escaped Cybermat!

But the episode is great stuff again. The Cybermen retreating to the tomb has had some flack over the years but from the Controller's behaviour afterwards it should be obvious they've got energy problems and their plan relied on getting to the revitalising machine quickly. You have to ask then why they didn't have one in the tombs!

Klieg, who's not learnt at all from his experience, tries to exploit the Cybermen needing something on their side of the hatch by once again coercing them to do his bidding:

DOCTOR: You still think you can bargain with the Cybermen?
KLIEG: Certainly. And this time on our terms.

KLIEG: They're coming. And now, gentlemen, you will see how I shall use the power of the Cybermen.
DOCTOR: Use maybe, but you'll never control the Cybermen.
KAFTAN: Eric, behind you!
KLIEG: Stop. You know what this can do to you.

KLIEG: That's better. Now you are under my control. We know you must be revitalised or you will perish. If you agree to my terms, I shall let you survive.
CONTROLLER: I will listen.
KAFTAN: Make them release Toberman.
JAMIE: If you think they'll listen to you, you're even dafter than I thought.
KLIEG: Silence. Sit down. First, you release our man.
KAFTAN: Toberman, it is good that you are back. Watch them.
JAMIE: Doctor, he seems er
DOCTOR: Yes, Jamie, yes.
KLIEG: Stay where you are! Now, do you agree to accept our plan?
DOCTOR: Plan?
KLIEG: The conquest of the Earth.
PARRY: What? You must be out of your mind.
KLIEG: Silence! Your answer?
CONTROLLER: We accept. We will give you some of our power devices.
KLIEG: Good. I knew an understanding could be reached. I shall let you be revitalised. To survive, it must be now. Come forward. Slowly.

His next step is to lock the Cybercontroller in the rejuvenation chamber where the Doctor tries to trap him in the rejuvenation machine like what happened to Victoria in the first episode:

DOCTOR: I think not. I think there must be some sort of internal timing mechanism. Jamie, I hope you made those ropes secure.
JAMIE: Oh, the King of the beasties himself couldnae get out of that one.
DOCTOR: Good!

You can guess what happens next: The Controller bursts through the front of the machine shattering it!

DOCTOR: Jamie, remind me to give you a lesson in tying knots sometime.

Even though this attempt at bargaining with the Cybermen goes wrong he still ventures back down into the tombs for another go:

KLIEG: And so you have forfeited your right to survival. I shall make an example of you to all who question my intelligence, and the supreme power of the Cybermen.
DOCTOR: You know, I've heard all this before somewhere.
JAMIE: You know your trouble? You talk too much.
KLIEG: Oh, you're stupid. You still think that your puny minds can survive against us? You're decadent, weak. Do you know that? Weak!
DOCTOR: All right. Go ahead, kill us.
KLIEG: No, I have a better idea. Much better idea. I shall leave you to the Cybermen. I'm sure they'll have some use for you. Or parts of you.

Unfortunately during that frothing exchange he's not noticed what's going on behind him and meets his end at the hands of a Cyberman.

The dying Cyberman, with foam emerging from it's battered chest unit, drew criticism for the BBC at the time for being too gruesome and led to co-author Kit Pedler appearing on the BBC Talkback show to debate the issue.

However the real horror in this episode for me comes from what's done to Toberman. First we see him controlled by the Cybermen:

Then it becomes apparent that he's been figuratively altered with his right arm replaced by a Cyberman arm. Why just that arm isn't quite clear and to be honest not a lot of screen time is given to this alteration that spends most of the episode covered over. The intention was that Toberman's partial conversion would be prefigured by having him being deaf and wearing hearing aids, a small first step to the replacement of his body by artificial parts.

In the end it's his modification by the Cybermen, allied to his already great physical strength demonstrated previously, that allows him to overcome the Controller, close the main main doors and complete the electrical circuit at the cost of his life.

I think Tomb's a cracking story: decent monsters & villains, fabulous sets and some really good lines for Troughton. For many years it was seen as the highpoint of the series but since it's 1992 return it's taken a bit of a battering from fans compared to it's previous reputation. Don't care. I love it.

The Tomb of the Cybermen novel, by it's television co-author Gerry Davis, was one of the first Troughton stories I encountered, possibly even THE first. My local library had two Troughton books, both in Hardback: this was one, Web of Fear was the other. Their copy of Web now sits on my bookshelf thanks to a withdrawn book sale. It's complete with a once again inaccurate cover showing like the Cybermen, the novelization of The Moonbase television story, the wrong sort of Cybermen: both covers feature the Invasion version.

In 1983 the BBC held a vastly over subscribed 20th anniversary Celebration convention at Longleat House in Wiltshire. During the weekend a poll was taken to determine which story would be the first released on video. Tomb of the Cybermen won. One problem: Tomb didn't exist at the time. So the BBC went for the next best thing that did exist: Revenge of the Cybermen. The first Revenge video release upheld the "wrong Cybermen on the cover" tradition by appearing with an Earthshock Cyberman on it's front! We'll forgive them the neon logo as that was in use by the series at the time!

As we've said previously, Tomb was eventually released on video on May 4th 1992. It had been planned as a missing story audio release but the story's recovery temporarily shelved that. The audio cassette, with narration by Jon Pertwee, was eventually released in June 1993. Tomb's recovery affecting the release schedules was rumoured to put a stop on further missing episode releases presumably because the BBC thought more recoveries were imminent. I'm not sure this theory holds up: The audio cassettes were selling very, very well at the time. A new Tomb of the Cybermen Soundtrack CD was released in 2006, with new narration by Frazer Hines, completing Season 5 on BBC CD.

Tomb of the Cybermen was released on DVD on the 14th January 2002 and was the first release to feature Patrick Troughton or, indeed, black and white material. This release wasn't VIDFIRED to restore the video look due to the process being in it's infancy at the time. However Planet of the Giants was already out on Video and does use the VIDFIRE process and there's a small Easter Egg of Vidfired material on this release. Tomb of the Cybermen was the earliest Doctor Who DVD to be deleted. A new version, with VIDFIRE and loads of new extras was released in the Doctor Who Revisitations III boxset alongside The Three Doctors & The Robots of Death in late 2011.

The DVD has a lovely little extra on it: over the selection screen for the episodes plays the audio of a trailer for the missing next Episode, the first part of The Abominable Snowmen!